Like a knight on the trail of the Holy grail, actor Tom Wisdom is hungry for success. George Frew catches up with him on the eve of his visit to Oxford . . .

Leaving the longest-running soap opera in the world can be a dodgy business, career-wise. Many high-profile actors have taken a gamble in quitting Coronation Street at the height of their popularity, with great expectations - only to find themselves condemned to a life of doing panto in Swindon.

But there are the exceptions, of course; Sarah Lancashire has recently been listed as one of the highest-earning women in Britain.

Despite leaving the Street when her character, Raquel, was one of the mainstays of the show, she has since gone on to further fame and fortune in a variety or roles.

And now Tom Wisdom - formerly heart-throb hairdresser Tom Ferguson in Corrie - is hoping that his role as the tortured and cynical Guy Bennett in Another Country - the part that propelled Rupert Everett to film stardom - will have a similar effect on his career.

In the play, which is hardly a great recruiting advertisement for Eton, Bennett is a homosexual schoolboy ultimately betrayed by his peers - a harrowing experience which influences his later life.

The author, Julian Mitchell, wrote it as a direct allegory on the Burgess-Philby-McLean spy scandal and Tom Wisdom freely admits that Bennett is a part to die for.

"I think I left Coronation Street at just the right time," he admits. "I'd done it for a year and basically, my character was going nowhere. But we've kept it open whether I return or not, which is nice.

"I did have reservations about leaving, that's true. I learned a lot on Corrie, but there's such a quick turn-around between shows that you don't really get time to do good acting, although it is harder than most jobs.

"If you're in a soap, you don't get regarded as a serious actor, but Corrie helped me - it got me in to see more casting directors and it taught me how to deal with the Press!" he laughs.

At 27, Wisdom has been in a serious relationship with Family Affairs star Gabby Johnson for the past seven years. Despite their chosen showbiz careers, neither of them feel any need to be out on the town every night, seeking the paparrazi's flahlights like a hungry shark seeks its prey.

He comes from an ordinary, balanced, working-class background. His dad was an RAF fitter, which meant the family (he has an older brother, Martin, in the foreign office and a younger sister, Hannah, who wants to be a pop singer) moved around a fair bit.

"They were totally shocked when I got the part in Corrie," he recalls.

"But I'm really not one for the celebrity lifestyle and Gabby's the same - although she tends to go to a few more of these parties than I do - but I'm not interested in being seeing in celebrity bars, playing cheesy stars."

And you so you ask him if the price of fame is ever worth paying. "If you want it, I suppose you'll go and get it anyway," says Wisdom.

"In London, where we live, I'm never recognised but as soon as I go outside London, it's a different story entirely. At first, it was a bit odd, but you eventually get used to it."

He speaks about his part in Another Country the way a Knight Templar might have talked about the Holy Grail.

"The play really shows that we are all people of circumstance. It examines tribal loyalties and how they can affect your viewpoint. Public schools then were all about young gentlemen not allowed to be themselves. In the end, my character Bennett turns his back on everyone because everyone has turned their back on him."

Perhaps Bennett's only true friend as his life collapses around his ears is Judd, played by former OUDS member Ben Meyjes, who read English at St Catherine's College and performed in Playboy of The Western World at the Oxford Playhouse in 1996.

For both, the play represents the chance to shine, in much the same way as it helped launch the careers of the likes of Rupert Everett, Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Day Lewis and Colin Firth. But for Corrie's Tom, it also gives him the opportunity of making the critics and casting directors alike sit up and take notice.

It gives him the platform to prove that he is, indeed, a 'serious' actor, capable of playing so much more than a crimper in a bleak backstreet in the north of England.

For this indeed is Another Country - and the time for young Tom to cut his Wisdom teeth.